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From: ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Pronunciations (was: And how do you pronounce "csh"?)
Message-ID: <2566@munnari.oz.au>
Date: 29 Oct 89 07:55:00 GMT
References: <2556@munnari.oz.au> <5267@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au
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In article <5267@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) writes:
> From article <2556@munnari.oz.au>, by ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe):
> " ...  (The first syllable of "character" does __not__ sound like "care".)

> That's true for some English dialects but false for many others.
> In my speech, the first syllable of "character" is "char-" and
> does sound exactly like "care".

Wierd.  I never heard that when I worked in the US.

[syllabification of C keywords:]
 cha-rac-ter, struc-ture, in-te-ger, (type)de-fine,
 ex-ter-nal, e-nu-mer-ate, con-stant

> Except for the case of "de-fine", I believe that these observations
> are all incorrect for most varieties of American English.

I got my information from the Concise Oxford Dictionary, which claims
to consider American _forms_ but denies reporting American _pronunciation_.

> The evidence is indirect for most of the cases

If these words are divided differently in "most varieties of American
English", it should be possible to provide direct evidence by citing
a standard American dictionary.  For the sake of closing the argument,
let's take the current Webster's as definitive.  (The lip-rounding
thing doesn't agree with my dialect at all, but I'm not American.)